Amazon vs Google Ads: Which is Better Investment?

Amazon vs Google Ads

If you don’t live under the rock, you must know how the competition has soared in the e-commerce and sales sectors in recent years. In this regard, the clash between Amazon and Google Ads is pretty evident. Although it is unequivocally true that both are heavyweights, they have come even closer in recent years.

But, for your business, which one to choose?

According to WebFX, around 66% of businesses now use online advertising. So, regardless of your chosen platform, the growth potential is undoubtedly high. Now let us consider each aspect one by one here.

What do they Demand from You?

While Amazon has a long list of prerequisites for advertising your products in the Amazon marketplace, Google merely asks only for an essential registration to its platform. But, the long list should not change your mind to shift toward Google. However one need strong content writing skills to perform well in either of these platfoms.

According to a report by Vox, approximately 55% of online shoppers start their product search on Amazon. However, for Amazon, you need to be a professional seller with an active account. Further, you should be able to ship your goods, and have a product listing in at least one of its accessible categories. Additionally, you must be a member of the Amazon Brand Registry and qualify for the Buy Box.

Costs for the advertisements vary as well. To advertise on Amazon's platform, you must adhere to various pricing minimums for your ad campaigns.

Generally speaking, for Amazon, you also might need a minimum daily budget of $1 and a minimum campaign budget of $100. Regardless, the lone exception is their Display Ads campaign, where the minimum campaign spending is $35.

On the contrary, Google has no minimum budget, which allows more flexibility for businesses when it comes to bidding methods. But a professional copywriting service provider will help you perform well with any kinds of ads.

What are You Getting?

Besides paying for advertisement, this is a primary question to address. When you pay a considerable amount for advertising, which gives you more value for money?

With Amazon, you can promote your business on amazon.com or any other website that is affiliated with or owned by Amazon.

But, with Google, you can advertise on the Google search engine and also on Google Play Store, YouTube or Gmail.

Most importantly, both platforms understand the importance of online business and offer unique ad campaigns that are important for businesses.

For instance, Google provides multiple types of campaigns, including –
  • Display Network Campaign
  • Search Network Campaign
  • Shopping Campaign
  • App Campaign
  • Video Campaign
On the other hand, Amazon’s offer might not be that extensive, but it ensures basic needs are met, including – 
  • Sponsored Brands ads
  • Product Display ads
  • Sponsored Products ads

What are the Primary Differences between Amazon Ads and Google Ads?

To understand the differences, we need to take multiple aspects into account. So, let us consider each parameter at once.

1. Targeting Product

The distinctive benefit of Amazon Ads is that they target their ads with products rather than keywords. So, you can refine a list of products depending on the brand, star rating, and number of reviews. Further, advertisers can target certain products, entire categories, or lists of products.

Targeting Product

2. Audience and Demographic Targeting

Google clearly triumphs in this parameter. It has a vast user data archive that marketers can utilise to improve their ad campaigns. This user data include age, gender, household income, hobbies and interests, technology, and relationship status. This helps marketers to narrow the target base through ads and reach their ideal clients.

Audience and Demographic Targeting

On the other hand, Amazon only offers comparable targeting options for its Display Network service and Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform). Also, sponsored brands, products, or display ads do not support audience and demographic data.

3. Targeting Keywords

For both competitors, the key mechanism for attracting users are keyword searches. In this regard, both enable advertisers to use phraseological, focused, and broad keyword match types. Also, interestingly, the two advertisers' definitions for both the terms are identical.

They also display close variants of products for exact match keywords. But, when it comes to designating close variants, Google is once more open.


Targeting Keywords

4. Automatic Targeting

Amazon Ads have surpassed Google Ads in this automatic targeting aspect. Here, advertisers can utilise automated targeting for their sponsored product campaigns and delegate keyword research to Amazon.

Also, Amazon matches advertising with related products and keywords using automatic targeting. Here, users can view the list of search phrases and items where the advertisement appeared. This provides insightful data on the goods and keywords that you can include or exclude in your manual targeting campaigns.

Automatic Targeting

Automatic Targeting

5. Automated Bidding

With Google Ads, you can use several fully automated bidding algorithms, reducing the time-consuming bid optimisation process.

For instance, if you use a bidding strategy like Target ROAS or Maximise Conversions, Google will automatically set keyword bids and optimise them depending on the campaign goals and effectiveness.

By doing so, campaign administration becomes more straightforward, and there is no longer a need to spend hours customising bids constantly.

Unlike Google, Amazon Ads does not offer fully automated bidding tactics. Therefore, you will either need to manually set keyword bids or employ bid management software, such as pattern forecasting software.

However, there are two automated bid adjustment tools in Amazon Ads that can dynamically increase and decrease bids for you based on the likelihood of a conversion.

6. Tracking of Conversion

Tracking the conversion on Amazon Ads is straightforward. This is because you can automatically track your revenue and order the concerned products that you have advertised.

However, Google Ads mandates that you develop your conversion activities on your website for each event you wish to track, be it a sale or the submission of a lead form. This process enables advertisers to monitor significant actions beyond purchases. For instance, they can track when customers add an item to their shopping cart.

7. Ad Types

Apart from the parameters mentioned above, the ad types also differ in these platforms.

Ad Types for Amazon

Amazon offers four ad types.

  • Product Display Ads

Product display ads advertise a product on Amazon and can be shown on pages like those for similar products and user reviews.

Product Display Ads

  • Sponsored Products

In this case, a single product is promoted via Sponsored Products. Customers who use the Amazon app to shop can also see your adverts there.

Sponsored Products

  • Sponsored Brands

On Amazon, sponsored brands promote your business up to three products. Also, users can locate these advertisements in their mobile and desktop search results.

Sponsored Brands

  • Display Ads

Display Ads promote your company and its goods on Amazon's websites, devices, and apps. They might also pop up on affiliate websites. Above all, Display Ads can direct visitors to your product pages on Amazon or even to a website other than Amazon.

Display Ads

Ad Types on Google

The ad types on Google are more in comparison to Amazon. It offers seven types of ads, which comprises– 

  • Image Ad

Image advertisement can be animated, interactive, or static. Most importantly, these advertisements will appear on websites in the Google Search Network and Google Display Network but not in Google's search results

Image Ad

  • Responsive Ad

A responsive advertisement may include text or images. Also, it can automatically adapt to its host without your assistance, giving marketers more adaptability and flexibility.

Responsive Ad

  • Text Ad

When someone searches on Google, a text ad will advertise your company. In this case, a title and description are included in your text advertisement. Also, for users to learn more about your business, you may allow ad extensions.

Text Ad

  • Video Ad

These type of ads runs on partnered websites. They can run either as a single advertisement or as a pre-video advertisement.

Video Ad

  • Shopping Ad

A shopping advertisement promotes your online store and products. In addition, these advertisements allow you to connect with consumers who are just beginning or wrapping up their shopping, which can boost sales for your business.

Shopping Ad

  • App Ad

An app advertisement promotes a downloadable mobile application. But, only suitable devices, such as Android or iOS, can view these advertisements. Also, they might appear in Google Play and search results, as well as on Google-affiliated websites and applications.

App Ad

  • Call – only

A call-only advertisement includes your phone number and directs users to it as the landing page. This means that users who click on your advertisement will call your company.


8. Cost of Advertising

Lastly, the cost is crucial when deciding to promote your business online. Naturally, you want to set up a reasonable pay-per-click (PPC) advertising budget, but you also want to see a return on your investment. So, reviewing the cost of advertising on Google or Amazon beforehand is a good choice.

Nevertheless, Google Ads doesn't demand your business to set a minimum bid or budget, unlike Amazon Ads. Instead, your organisation can develop a bidding plan that satisfies your advertising needs and objectives.

However, it's important to remember that your market spending will impact your outcomes. This statement is particularly true because your bid is a consideration in Google's Ad Rank. Therefore, no matter how relevant your advertisement is, it may not reach your target demographic if your spending is too low.

Which One to Choose?

Frankly speaking, there is no definite answer to this question. But to answer this moot question, Google undoubtedly has most of the digital marketing share. However, according to The Motley Fool, a few marketers are now shifting their ads to Amazon, resulting in an approximately 41% increase in budget for Amazon Ads.

Digital marketing

Regardless, choose Google if you want to increase traffic to your website or if you only offer services. On the contrary, Amazon can be ideal for your business if you want to sell products but don't have enough budget to do it on your website.

So, Google gives businesses the ease to advertise online, but an eCommerce company might consider Amazon Ads as a superior option. Furthermore, a local service area business might choose Local SEO Strategy & Google Ads expanding their business over Amazon Ads. However, we can typically conclude that for the majority of eCommerce enterprises, Amazon Ads are the more profitable choice.

Author Bio:

Subhodip Das is a content marketing expert with over 10 years of SEO and Digital Marketing experience. He advises and assists businesses in reaching their goal with his content marketing strategies. Also, he founded Das Writing Services Private Limited, the leading content development agency in India, providing premium content across all domains.

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